Later on, again, if I remember correctly, it notated rank or senior status.. Am I correct in my remembering Tony?

There were definitely status cuts, and peon cuts. But it was, ultimately, personal preferences (coupled with prevailing norms) that mattered. The shaving of the head showed up fairly late (around the 1500s, judging by iconographic evidence), and never became totally universal although by the Edo period it was so pervasive that even commoners were doing it (for no logical reason).

What's interesting is that there are certain hair "archetypes" that are so prevalent that if someone shows up in an Edo-period TV drama or movie, you can often tell whether he's (supposed to be) a townsman, a peasant, a samurai, an Important Person, a criminal, or a layabout merely by the wig they put on the actor.

There was a Korean drama called Changumu (don't know the Korean name, but that is how it was pronounced in Japanese). Yumi got hooked pretty quickly. I began calling it 'chonmage.' Of course Yumi would get a little irritated knowing I was doing that on purpose. Then one day I found out her mother called it 'chonmage' too!